The Amityville Horror

George Lutz (Ryan Reynolds) and his wife Kathy (Melissa George) move with her three children — Billy, Michael, and Chelsea — into a large colonial home in Amityville, New York, in November 1975. The house was the site of a mass murder: Ronald DeFeo Jr. shot his entire family dead there one year earlier, claiming voices told him to. The Lutzes are told this before purchase. They buy it anyway.

Almost immediately, things begin to go wrong. Chelsea starts communicating with the ghost of Jodie DeFeo, one of the murdered children. George begins waking at exactly 3:15 a.m. — the time of the DeFeo murders — spending hours alone in the boathouse, growing withdrawn, cold, and volatile. The house is perpetually freezing despite the heat running constantly, and the children are terrorized by presences in the dark.

A priest, Father Callaway, arrives to bless the house and is driven out by a supernatural force — flies swarm the room, a voice screams at him to leave, and he flees in terror. His subsequent attempts to warn the Lutz family are repeatedly blocked.

George descends further. He begins identifying with Ronald DeFeo — hearing the same voices, seeing the same visions, feeding on his own guilt over being a stepfather and his psychological vulnerabilities. He threatens the children and chases Kathy, careening toward committing the same act DeFeo once did.

In the climax, Kathy fights to get the children out. George, briefly breaking the possession's hold, helps them escape — then nearly drowns in the flooded basement as the house attempts to keep him. He pulls free. The family flees and never returns. An epilogue notes that the Lutzes never retrieved their belongings and left Amityville forever. The house has changed hands many times since. The events remain unexplained.